


chosen

by orphan_account



Category: A Crown of Candy - Fandom, Dimension 20
Genre: Abuse, Campaign 05: A Crown of Candy, Grooming, Manipulation, Pre Ep 9, Religious Manipulation, Written Post Ep. 8, major character deaths
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-28
Updated: 2020-05-28
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:27:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24418114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: This will seem unfair for many years, but someday she will understand. She’ll never thank him, but Primsy will come to understand why she was sacrificed.
Kudos: 21





	chosen

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for ep. 8! CW for grooming of a young girl, violence, religious manipulation, me killing off major characters, an amputation not seen on screen but mentioned.

Cumulous rests on hand on Primsy’s shoulder. “You are chosen,” he says. “You will come with me.” 

There is a fight over it, barbed words on every side. Annabelle rages, backed into a corner that leads only to marriage and children and a life on land. Jet and Ruby are livid to have their new friend ripped away from them. Amethar is distant but disapproving. 

The Hungry One’s will must be done. They disembark at the foothills of the Great Rock Candy Mountains. She bids a tearful goodbye to Ruby and Jet, swear to find each other again when the war is over, and then they separate. They are children, and do not know what this will cost, that the odds are stacked as such that if any make it out alive it will be miraculous. The Rocks, Sir Theobald, and Prince Liam will go on to find Joren Jawbreaker. Cumulous and Primsy will travel deep into the range to the monastery where she will be trained in the ways of the Order of the Spinning Star. 

She cries as they hike, spends the whole four days' journey sobbing and stumbling over her own feet. He does not hold it against her. She is young and new to war. This will seem unfair for many years, but someday she will understand. She’ll never thank him, but she will understand why she was sacrificed.

The monastery is a humble collection of buildings set in the vale between two peaks. Primsy is given a small room in the main keep with a bed and a change of clothes. She keeps her headscarf, a necklace that was her mother’s, but the rest of her possessions go into the vault, not to be seen again. She cries often and freely, and they let her. Better to cry now than later. She takes her vows before the Cave of Many Rumbles, takes her vigil in the mountains, and becomes a sworn member of their order. Something spoke to her, the same something that spoke to him when Cumulous took his rites decades ago. A promise of power and a promise of fear.

He is not directly responsible for her training, but he hovers at the periphery of her lessons with Aster, the sword master, and Corin, their archmage. He feels responsible for her, for seeing her powers and bringing her to this foreign land full of strangers who wish to see her sharpened. She is slow to swordplay, but he could not have been more exact in his identification of her magic. Soon she can cast lightning and summon phantom armies, though she is loathe to use either. 

News of the war is scant and far between, and he keeps anything that might be personal from her. Annabelle is wed to Prince Liam Wilhelmina, tying the Dairy Islands irrevocably to the fate of Candia. Amethar falls defending Frosting Valley, an old man who cannot recreate the victories of his youth. The war goes poorly for Candia, and Primsy’s training is accelerated. Cumulous feels for the girl, really, he does, but in the face of the absolute destruction of two countries and the old magicks...one girl, even a former Duchess, is worth destroying.

She will not be moved to violence, takes hits from Aster to avoid striking back. It won't do. In a desperate move in the dead of night, he brings her to Mount Werther’s, at the edge of the mountain range. The Mother Abbess warned against it, but Cumulous needs her to understand what is at stake. They sit in the top of a tree and watch the village below burn, hear the screams of the townsfolk and the barking of hounds. 

“Why can’t we intervene?” She demands. Once, tears would have coursed down her face. Now, they are flint-steel shining in the dark. “Why are we _sitting here while they_ **_die_ ** _?”_

He rises to his feet. “Do you want to fight?” 

She shakes, looks at him with a face full of hate, knowing that he has set her up. “Yes.” 

“Okay,” he says, and begins to shinny down the tree. “Then let’s go.” 

Primsy kills fourteen Imperial soldiers that night. She throws up into a bush afterwards, and Cumulous rubs her back as soothingly as possible. When she straightens up, the look in her eyes is familiar. The Hungry One is within her now. She will be Candia’s weapon, and the Order’s way back into the civil world. 

She becomes their weapon, and Cumulous feeds his guilt to the Hungry One. They reclaim other villages, carefully expand their territory at the base of the mountains. They stop withholding information from her. News comes that Ruby Rocks is killed by the Pontifex Rex herself, but Primsy doesn’t even bat an eyelash for her former friend, just asks what that will mean for troop movements.

It’s been two years of war when they make their way to the capitol. The Mother Abbess blesses their company, all two and forty monks of the Order of the Spinning Star as they set forth from the mountains to reclaim the country. 

And reclaim they do. The bodies of the imperial guard pile high where they go. Cumulous wonders if he will ever get the bloodstains off of his skin. Primsy is the picture of neutrality as they go, never shaking, never crying, never hesitating. They trained her so well that whatever sweet girl existed inside of her was shattered and the fragments burned. The Duchess Coldbottle he met on the seas is dead. A young monk stands in her place, her magic strong and her blade sure. 

They retake Dulcington, capture Castle Candy, leaving blood in their wake. Sir Theobald is rescued from the cells beneath the castle, exhausted and weak. His eyes still burn with the light that first drew Cumulus to him all those years ago. He is not the same man as he was when they had their dalliances while serving under Lazuli, nor the man who surged out of the Dairy Sea to defend him, but Cumulous is glad to see him nonetheless. 

They reconvene with Jet’s forces on the banks of the Cola. She is older now, missing her left arm from the elbow down. She and Primsy embrace, but it’s stiff. Neither is the girl they once were in Comida or on the _Colby_. 

They push the imperial guard outside their borders, and the monks lay their wards. They build a shimmering wall of magic between Candia, the Dairy Islands, and the rest of the continent. Primsy is the cornerstone, and her magic emanates brilliant blue around her, the tails of her headscarf flapping in the breeze generated by the force of her power. They lay down their curse: any enemies of their new freed states who cross the barrier will be consumed by the light of the Hungry One and turn their wrath tenfold upon their own peoples. They isolate fully from the rest of Calorum, and none will stand in the way of the resurgence of the worshippers of the Hungry One and the Sweetening Path. 


End file.
